There were many admirable things about General Colin Powell’s interview on Meet The Press yesterday, not least his eloquence (there’s that word again) despite his scarcely concealed fury at the antics of some of his Republican colleagues in seeking to smear Barack Obama’s character across the living room walls of America.

First, his cool dissection of Sarah Palin:

She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired.  But at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the Vice President.  And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

It’s easy to dismiss this as little more than has been said by anybody with an ounce of intelligence over the past two months, but this man has been a personal friend of John McCain for almost a quarter of a century.  He’s basically publicly calling his friend a wanker.

This same sentiment was echoed beautifully by the Kansas City Star in its editorial this weekend endorsing Obama:

Despite his age and previous health problems, McCain chose a vice presidential candidate who is so clearly unqualified for high office that the thought of her stepping into the presidency is frightening.

That irresponsible decision casts serious doubt on McCain’s judgment at this point in his political career. And over the past eight years, Americans have come to know, all too well, the high price of carelessness and ineptitude in the White House.

Ouch.

Best of all, though, was Powell’s direct response – the first of which I am aware by any American politician, black or white, red or blue – to the smears about Obama’s religion and ethnicity.

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the [Republican] party say and… permit to be said, such things as, “Well, you that know Mr. Obama is a Muslim.”

Well, the correct answer is, “He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian.  He’s always been a Christian.”

But the really right answer is: “What if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”

The answer’s no, that’s not America.

Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.”

This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Spot on, absolutely superb and precisely what should be said in the face of such ludicrous claims – in stark contrast with McCain simply grabbing back the microphone from Crazy McCain Lady and shaking his head when she babbles on about Obama The A-rab.

Hard though it may be to believe, Ms. Palin and Messrs. Bush, Cheney and McCain, but patriotism is not the preserve of Ivy League-educated, pasty-faced, good ole white boy WASPs.

For all the, ahem, terminological inexactitudes that fell from Powell’s lips at the United Nations in 2002 and 2003 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, in one seven-minute Sunday morning interview the man has rescued his reputation in a manner the likes of which Clare Short can scarcely conceive.

It’s like meeting a Tory and discovering you like them as a person.*

* I hypothesise, of course.